5.4 Emerging Technologies for NoCs

Printer-friendly version PDF version

Date: Wednesday 11 March 2015
Time: 08:30 - 10:00
Location / Room: Chartreuse

Chair:
Ian O'Connor, University of Lyon, FR

Co-Chair:
Davide Bertozzi, University of Ferrara, IT

Several new technologies are enabling capabilities for NoCs. In this session, we demonstrate how to leverage optical, 3D and wireless methodologies to improve your NoCs. The first paper explores crosstalk mitigation techniques in optical NoCs. The second paper explores TSV minimization through virtual channels and the final paper deals with dynamic calibration in wireless NoCs.

TimeLabelPresentation Title
Authors
08:305.4.1COHERENT CROSSTALK NOISE ANALYSES IN RING-BASED OPTICAL INTERCONNECTS
Speakers:
Luan H.K. Duong1, Mahdi Nikdast2, Jiang Xu1, Zhehui Wang1, Yvain Thonnart3, Sébastien Le Beux4, Peng Yang1, Xiaowen Wu1 and Zhifei Wang1
1The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HK; 2École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, CA; 3CEA-Leti, FR; 4Lyon Institute of Nanotechnology, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, FR
Abstract
Recently, optical interconnects have been proposed for ultra-high bandwidth and low latency inter/intra-chip communication in multiprocessor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs). These optical interconnects employ the microresonators (MRs) to direct/detect the optical signal. However, utilized MRs suffer from intrinsic crosstalk noise and power loss, degrading the network efficiency via the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this paper, both coherent and incoherent crosstalk in wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) networks are discussed and systematically analyzed. We carefully develop our analytical models at the optical-circuit level, and apply them to two ring-based networks: SUOR and Corona ONoCs. The quantitative results have demonstrated that the architectural design of the ONoCs determines the impact of crosstalk on the SNR. Even though SUOR and Corona are both ring-based ONoCs, the worst-case SNR can be differed up to 50dB. Our analyses of the worst-case SNR can be utilized as a platform to compare the realistic performance among different optical interconnection networks via the degradation of BER and data bandwidth.

Download Paper (PDF; Only available from the DATE venue WiFi)
09:005.4.2ENABLING VERTICAL WORMHOLE SWITCHING IN 3D NOC-BUS HYBRID SYSTEMS
Speakers:
Changlin Chen, Marius Enachescu and Sorin Cotofana, Delft University of Technology, NL
Abstract
In Networks-on-Chip (NoC) systems Wormhole Switching (WS) enables lower packet transmission latency and requires less silicon real estate than the Packet Switching (PS). However, enabling vertical WS in conventional 3D NoC-Bus hybrid systems requires a large amount of TSVs, which have low yield in state of theart 3D staking technology. In this paper, we alleviate this issue by introducing a Bus Virtual Channel (VC) Allocation (BVA) mechanism, which assigns to at most one cross layer packet a free input VC in its target router before injecting it into the bus. In this way, a routing path is reserved by the head flit, and the rest of the packet flits can be WS transmitted through the vertical buses. Given that VC allocation is performed only once per packet per hop BVA can be performed in such a way that it doesn't become a system bottleneck. We evaluated our proposal with both synthetic and real application traffics and the experimental results indicate that when vertical WS is implemented, the bus critical path length is reduced by at least 31% and the average packet transmission latency is reduced by at least 22%, when compared with conventional pipelined bus or TDMA bus based systems. Moreover, the area cost and power consumption of the output buffer incident to the bus are reduced by 47% and 43%, respectively.

Download Paper (PDF; Only available from the DATE venue WiFi)
09:305.4.3A CLOSED LOOP TRANSMITTING POWER SELF-CALIBRATION SCHEME FOR ENERGY EFFICIENT WINOC ARCHITECTURES
Speaker:
Maurizio Palesi, Kore University, IT
Authors:
Andrea Mineo1, Mohd Shahrizal Rusli2, Maurizio Palesi3, Giuseppe Ascia1, Vincenzo Catania1 and M. N. Marsono2
1University of Catania, IT; 2Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, MY; 3Kore University, IT
Abstract
In a wireless Network-on-Chip (WiNoC) the radio transceiver accounts for a significant fraction of the total communication energy. Recently, a configurable transceiver architecture able to regulate its transmitting power based on the location of the destination node has been proposed. Unfortunately, the use of such transceiver requires a costly, time consuming and complex characterization phase performed at design time and mainly based on the use of field solver simulators whose accuracy has not yet been proved in the context of integrated on-chip antennas. In this paper we present a closed loop transmitting power self-calibration mechanism which allows to determine on-line the optimal transmitting power for each transmitting and receiving pair in a WiNoC. The proposed mechanism is general and can be applied to any WiNoC architecture with a low overhead in terms of silicon area. Its application to three well known WiNoC architectures shows its effectiveness in drastically reducing the overall communication energy (up to 50%) with a limited impact on performance.

Download Paper (PDF; Only available from the DATE venue WiFi)
10:00IP2-8, 894COHERENCE BASED MESSAGE PREDICTION FOR OPTICALLY INTERCONNECTED CHIP MULTIPROCESSORS
Speakers:
Anouk Van Laer1, Chamath Ellawala1, Muhammad Ridwan Madarbux1, Timothy M. Jones2 and Philip M. Watts1
1University College London, GB; 2University of Cambridge, GB
Abstract
Photonic networks on chip have been proposed to reduce latency and power consumption of on-chip communication in chip multiprocessors. However, in switched photonic networks, the path setup latency can create a high overhead, particularly for the short messages generated by shared memory chip multiprocessors (CMP). This has led to proposals for networks which avoid switching using all-to-all or single writermultiple reader (SWMR) networks which dramatically increase optical component counts and hence power consumption. In this work we propose a predictor which uses information from the coherence protocol and previously transmitted messages to predict future messages and hence hide the path setup latency by speculatively setup photonic paths. We show that a directly mapped predictor can achieve prediction hit rates of up to 85% for PARSEC benchmarks in a 16-core x86 system using the MESI coherence protocol whereas a more resource efficient set associative predictor can still achieve prediction rates up to 75%

Download Paper (PDF; Only available from the DATE venue WiFi)
10:00End of session
Coffee Break in Exhibition Area

Coffee Break in Exhibition Area

On all conference days (Tuesday to Thursday), coffee and tea will be served during the coffee breaks at the below-mentioned times in the exhibition area.

Lunch Break

On Tuesday and Wednesday, lunch boxes will be served in front of the session room Salle Oisans and in the exhibition area for fully registered delegates (a voucher will be given upon registration on-site). On Thursday, lunch will be served in Room Les Ecrins (for fully registered conference delegates only).

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Coffee Break 10:30 - 11:30

Lunch Break 13:00 - 14:30; Keynote session from 13:20 - 14:20 (Room Oisans) sponsored by Mentor Graphics

Coffee Break 16:00 - 17:00

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Coffee Break 10:00 - 11:00

Lunch Break 12:30 - 14:30, Keynote lectures from 12:50 - 14:20 (Room Oisans)

Coffee Break 16:00 - 17:00

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Coffee Break 10:00 - 11:00

Lunch Break 12:30 - 14:00, Keynote lecture from 13:20 - 13:50

Coffee Break 15:30 - 16:00